Movie Details
| Title: | The Victim | |
| Director: | Sammo Hung | |
| Year: | 1980 | |
| Genre: | Kung-Fu | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 06.28.13 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Eastern Condors
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 06.28.13 | Marchesa | This Screening is part of event: AFS Old School Kung Fu Weekend 2013 The second half of Friday's double feature was revealed to be Sammo Hung's The Victim. Lars introduced this film as being a step up from the previous since Hung had a bit more aptitude and perhaps budget to shoot the fight scenes in a more dynamic way. He also mentioned being able to see technical shifts in the film in how it starts with a very old school execution but by the end you start to see a tiny bit of wire work and more new school of kung fu which we are saturated with now. Indeed the fight choreography here was really top notch, and I like how Sammo Hung was unabashedly fat. Not like today standards morbidly obese but for the 70s? that dude was fat. He could still move pretty damn fast though and brought a lot of silliness to his role as a guy desperately searching for a master to teach him better kung fu. He finds it in Leung Ka-Yan AKA “Beardy” as Lars called him. Lars actually went on quite a while about the quality of this guy's beard. I saw it. It was a good one. I guess by Chinese standards it could be described as amazing. Dan also told the story of the print for this movie which he warned was pretty crappy. He bought it from some guy in the UK who in turn had acquired it years ago from a guy in Taiwan then stored in his basement for years and years. Apparently when Dan got his hands on it the print was in small separate piles and he had to construct the film piece by piece. For this trailer reel, Dan picked a few showcasing targeted marketing toward urban markets. The first trailer was for a film called BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE and a hilarious trailer for a movie called FORCED TO FIGHT where the narrator asks “How will a man react when his baby is iced?” and the word “KUNG FU-R-R-ROCIOUS” is printed on the screen. Both trailers had the Aquarius Releasing logo on it. I feel like I've heard a tiny bit about Terry Levene and Aquarius but I'd really love a doc or book or something going into more depth. There's probably not actually much of a story there - just a businessman who owned a 42nd St. theater who played to his audience - but still. My experience of this movie was another reason why I wanted to attend. I guess I'm a lightweight these days when it comes to movie watching, or maybe it's the hypnotic effect of the fighting with it's rhythmic pauses between attacks and repeating sound effects for each blow but I found my eyelids getting heavy about half way through this. That meant that I really have no clear perception of how long the end fight lasted. I'd kind of drift off, then come back and the guys would be in a new place still fighting, then I'd drift off again and come back to the guys sweatier with more bruise make-up on but still fighting. Always fighting. That's a really cool experience I think. Falling asleep during a movie in the theater, coming in and out, having time and space kind of fold in on itself until it's just the images on the screen and sounds in the air all synched in time and rhythm. So I'm not really sure how the movie ended but I don't mind. |
